BRIE LARSON
Absolutely! And NAOMI is a charmingly offbeat ARTIST. Oh, by the way, I want to box up my LEFTOVERS, please. And my seatmate’s. And the guy’s over there who just left without finishing.

SERVER
Your pets must be in for quite a treat!

BRIE LARSON
Er…no.

BRIE leaves the restaurant and hails a cab. On her way home, she sees an INTOXICATED, HOMELESS GUY who turns out to be her dad but pretends not to. She then goes home and calls her older sister, SARAH SNOOK.

BRIE LARSON
Dad and Mom are penniless and out of control. Whatever shall we do?

SARAH SNOOK
This is news? They’ve been trainwrecks since we were born.

BRIE LARSON
Of course not, I just had to emphasize to the audience how conflicted I am. Ciao.

INT: A HOSPITAL

In the FIRST of MANY FLASHBACKS, YOUNG BRIE LARSON is being INTERVIEWED by a SOCIAL WORKER and a DOCTOR.

SOCIAL WORKER
So, you say you got THIRD DEGREE BURNS on your TORSO from COOKING by YOURSELF? And you’re what, seven?

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
Three in the book, but around seven here. But it’s no biggie – I cook all the time! On an actual stove! Unsupervised ’cause my mom gets so absorbed in PAINTING that she FORGETS to FEED ME.

DOCTOR
What’s that noise?

WOODY comes whooping into the room with YOUNG BRIE’s YOUNG SISTER and BROTHER, who is wearing a BLOODY HEAD BANDAGE.

WOODY HARRELSON
(actually tries some)
Not bad. Hey, YOUNG BRIE, did you know DR. BOURGEOIS McTWITFACE is going to use our hard-earned money to gas up his Mercedes?

DOCTOR
SIR, in my opinion, you aren’t even qualified to rear a CHIA-PET. Plus, you appear to spend more on your shirts than your kids.

WOODY HARRELSON
(lunges at him)

DOCTOR
FIRST, it’s a violation of the HIPPOCRATIC OATH to turn away a patient in need. Second, oh never mind, I know already I’m not going to win this one.

LATER ON, WOODY and HIS KIDS sneak back into the hospital to CREATE A DIVERSION in order to SPRING YOUNG BRIE. It works! They then join HEAVILY PREGNANT NAOMI in the Auto of Free-Spiritedness, and they head out into the desert for adventure.

EXT. DESERT WILDERNESS by the FIRESIDE

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
DADDY, MOMMY’s off doing hippie stuff, and I’m scared. Can you possibly try to act like a REAL DAD for once? Give me a hug, read me a bedtime story?

WOODY HARRELSON
I’ll try. See the FIRE? It’s a METAPHOR for ADVENTURE. It’s one of the FILM’s THREE METAPHORS. Understand?

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
No. Plus I thought I heard something scary in the tumbleweed over there.

WOODY HARRELSON
(real response)
Me too! Did it have big ears and pointy teeth? I know just who you mean! He scares me, too.

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
Gee, DADDY, you’re about as comforting as an air-conditioner on a sub-zero night.

WOODY HARRELSON
The BOOGEYMAN is another metaphor. He represents the FEARS WE CAN’T FACE.

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
Huh? I thought maybe it was a coyote. Thanks, Dad.

WOODY HARRELSON
By the way, you’re beautiful regardless of any scarring from the burns. See even though most of the time, I am a huge dick, occasionally I can put on my “Act like a good dad” hat.

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
This is going to be one grim movie.

EXT: ABANDONED WAREHOUSY BUILDING in the PRESENT

WOODY HARRELSON
Howdy, BRIE and this guy you’re inexplicably fond of. C’mon on in and have a drink.

BRIE LARSON
Gee, MOM, your painting is awesome. It reminds me of the one you did while we were mixing butter and sugar together as little kids because we were literally out of anything else.

JOSH CARAS
It reminds me of the time when GRANDMA MOLESTED ME. Good times.

SARAH SNOOK
Boy, does adversity make one strong or what!

BRIE LARSON
MOM, can I talk to you privately for a minute? I’m going to get engaged to MAX, but I don’t want to tell DADDY.

NAOMI WATTS
Honey, that’s just fine. He seems like a nice young man.

BRIE LARSON
Who are you, and what the heck have you done with my REAL MOTHER?

WOODY HARRELSON
(from other room)
Hey, kids, me and MAX are gonna have an arm-wrestling contest. Come on and watch!

BRIE LARSON
Oh no. No, no, no…You’re drunk, by the way. Both of you.

WOODY HARRELSON
All the better for some more ugly family truths to come out then.

WOODY and MAX actually do this, to much whooping from the sidelines, including BRIE who yells, “Kill him, kill him,” at her HUSBAND. Finally, Max WINS.

LATER ON – SHARED APARTMENT OF FEIGNED NORMALCY

MAX GREENFIELD
Uh, honey? You seemed a little out of control tonight. I thought I even saw a strand of hair descend from your BUN of REPRESSDNESS.

BRIE LARSON
I’m fine. By the way, MOM gave us her blessing.

MAX GREENFIELD
Okay then. But you know, maybe…therapy?

BRIE LARSON
I’m FINE!

EXT. PUBLIC SWIMMING POOL – FLASHBACK

YOUNG BRIE and FAMILY are poolside. They appear to be the ONLY WHITE FOLKS in the VICINITY, but everyone ignores them and goes on splashing.

NAOMI WATTS
This is what my life has become? I’m reduced to showering at a public pool.

WOODY HARRELSON
You knew when you met me that I was a free spirit. What did you expect?

(raises voice)
BRIE, honey, go on and SWIM already!

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
I can’t, DADDY. Why did you bring us to a pool without any kind of shallow end or kiddie option? Have you not ever heard of water wings?

WOODY HARRELSON
(picks her up and hurls her into the water)
That’s the THIRD METAPHOR right there!

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
(once she’s finished coughing up water and recovered her breath)
DADDY, you’re INSANE.

A CONSPICUOUSLY WHITE GUY approaches.
SIR, might I suggest that you find a more humane way to teach your daughter about metaphors. Ones that won’t result in her going back to the emergency room or lifelong therapy as an adult as a result.

WOODY HARRELSON
Damn you, Nosy McRacist. Mind your own business.

CONSPICUOUSLY WHITE GUY
I’m the manager, and you’re totally drunk.

WOODY HARRELSON
(lunges at him)

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
DADDY, at this point your STUBBORN ECCENTRICITY is looking a lot more like OUTRIGHT ABUSIVENESS. Do you really have to put everyone you disagree with in a headlock? And just where do you get the money for all this booze anyway?

WOODY HARRELSON
(real line)
You can’t spend your life clinging to the side of the pool.

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
Then teach me to swim like a normal dad would. Problem solved.

INT. ENGAGEMENT PARTY at the APARTMENT of GETTING MORE STRAINED by the MINUTE NORMALCY – PRESENT.

NAOMI and WOODY have shown up to crash BRIE’s and MAX’s CELEBRATION.

NAOMI WATTS
So I thought this would be a cool time to tell you that we own a MILLION DOLLAR PROPERTY, BRIE. That won’t upset your hard-won equilibrium or anything now, will it?

BRIE LARSON
(real reaction)
?!

NAOMI WATTS
Also, WOODY and I were thinking maybe we could borrow some money off MAX. For the sake of PLOT PURPOSES.

BRIE LARSON
(real reaction)
?!

WOODY HARRELSON
So how about it?

BRIE freaks out and orders WOODY and NAOMI to leave. They are mystified at this, but eventually DO.

INT. RAMSHACKLE HOUSE in BOONDOCKS – ANOTHER FLASHBACK

YOUNG BRIE LARSON to SIBLINGS
(trying to ignore the sound of WOODY and NAOMI fighting)
Come on, let’s go play outside.

They try, but then they see NAOMI dangling from the window, which puts a crimp into their playtime. They all rush upstairs to INTERVENE.

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
MOM, DAD? what’s going on?

WOODY HARRELSON
(real reaction, starts laughing)

YOUNG BRIE LARSON
Excuse me?

NAOMI WATTS
(joins in)
Oh wow, that was hilarious. I saw my life flash before my eyes, which I’ve apparently always wanted to do. Also being called crude terms for an adult woman’s anatomy just makes me want to get closer to you.

I don’t know what this says about me, but there’s a particular stock character in Hollywood movies who I always wind up feeling sorry for – sometimes even more so than for the protagonist, as I did in the just-released “The Glass Castle.” It’s the “nice guy fiancé” role – you know, the heroine’s dream guy, who’s witty, devoted and charming, but who is destined to either be a) left literally at the altar, or b) given an impromptu off-the-cuff speech about values by the heroine, after Life Lessons about being yourself above all, dawn on her. Here, it’s Max Greenfield, who is witty, devoted and above all, quite rich, to whom Brie Larson is engaged as the film opens. However, she has not yet told her parents (Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts) who are currently squatting in an abandoned home in New York. By all measures, Max is perfect for Brie, a magazine columnist, for whom saying that she had a chaotic upbringing is like saying the Titanic sustained some water damage. In real life, this match would make it through the wedding, but because this is your typical movie, we know from the start that Brie’s issues will get in the way, and the collateral damage won’t be pretty.

“The Glass Castle” is based on the best-selling memoir by Jeannette Walls, and charts how she and her three siblings were dragged from pillar to post across the country, often hungry if not penniless, while her artist mother painted and her alcoholic father dreamed big dreams that never came to fruition because he, too, was tormented by demons. They lived in homes with no electricity or heat (when Jeannette’s older sister points this out, her dad responds, “Ignore her. She was born without vision.”) when they weren’t staying with Woody’s evil mother. But all this was temporary, according to Woody, because he was going to one day build the titular Glass Castle. At first, Jeannette (played as a girl by Ella Anderson) finds all these adventures thrilling and has the utmost faith that Daddy will come through; eventually, she realizes that she is being “parented” by incompetents and makes a pact with her siblings to stick together until they are old enough to escape. When they do manage to, their parents follow them to New York with their youngest sister. Neither Woody nor Naomi is thrilled to see their middle daughter embracing the bourgeois lifestyle. Eventually, Jeannette begins to have doubts, as well.

The movie includes most of the memorable scenes from the book: the opener when Jeannette burns herself badly enough to land in the hospital; the scene where the kids band together against Woody’s evil mother (for good cause), and one in which Woody repeatedly throws Jeannette into the water to “teach” her how to swim. This serves as the film’s central metaphor, which is pounded helpfully into the movie-goer’s cranium. The cast all does a decent job bringing the memoir to life, but those critics who have pointed out that the film tries to wrap up dysfunction with a pretty bow have a point.

This movie has a major twist, which the review reveals. Read at your own risk.

“Am I dreaming?” stammers Mary Portman (Naomi Watts), as she opens her eyes and discovers that her mouth is bound with duct tape, her previously comatose son is looming over her, and – oh by the way – she’s nude in the bathtub. This may prompt a snicker from the viewer given how many times the main character has woken from a nightmare and “fooled” the viewer. But this time, yes, it’s for real. In “Shut-In,” Naomi plays a child psychologist who winds up getting stuck in a New England snowstorm in her home “alone” with her disabled son from a car crash that killed her husband. And in a plot twist best described as Freud meets “Misery,” she’s about to be taken hostage by her own son. Oh, and she also has an adorable deaf boy (Jacob Tremblay from “Room”) who is one of her patients in the house. who was previously believed to be lost, in peril because – why not? The more people in peril the better! Luckily, Naomi’s doctor, Oliver Platt, has been able to glean from Skype that something is amiss and is hopefully on the way to intervene, snow and all. So there is a lot of suspense – or at least is supposed to be.

Before going into the rest of the plot, let’s discuss “Misery,” for a minute. I know it’s movie villains like Freddy Krueger and Norman Bates that tend to get mentioned as the scariest of all time, but in my opinion, Kathy Bates’s performance as an unbalanced “greatest fan,” of romance writer, James Caan, is one of the most frightening I’ve ever seen on screen. (Who else could make epithets like “Mr. Man,” and “Dirty birdie,” sound more sinister than cursing?) However, if you are hoping for an equally or at least somewhat as suspenseful movie with “Shut In,” you will be waiting quite awhile. Sure there is eye candy in the form of the troubled (to put it mildly) adolescent son, Charlie Heaton, who sulks and pouts smolderingly in the mold of a young Leo DiCaprio or Stephen Dorff, and there’s plenty of cringe factor in the set-up of a son who is infatuated with mom – but the pacing is odd. How slow is this movie? It’s the equivalent of sitting in a really boring class with a growling stomach before lunch. Things tend to happen either lickety-split or with the agonizing slowness of molasses trickling from a congealed jug in August. Perhaps the mistake was putting in enough “Misery” elements so that the viewer naturally expects a similar movie in terms of quality. That was my mistake anyway.

“Shut-In,” expects the viewer to swallow wholesale a couple of things that might be difficult. First, that a parent who is a child psychologist could completely miss the signs that her son is a sociopath, as he has never done anything violent save for a one time stand against some bullies. Second, it asks you to believe that said sociopath could successfully fake catatonia from the moment he wakes up in the hospital to the moment where he takes mom hostage. Said sociopathic son has only decided to drop the façade because he’s overheard Naomi and Oliver discussing putting him in an institution. Now Naomi is not only trying to save herself and the little boy, who Charlie believes is his “replacement,” but she must also play along at times when she’s cornered. I can see how a loving mother, even a psychologist, might be blind to the signs that there is something off about her child, especially if his behavior doesn’t fit the neat little diagnostic boxes. However, the second part seems impossible or at least implausible. Your mileage may vary on this.

As for the storm itself, it’s pretty benign by New England standards. Most New Englanders are going to look at it and shrug because they’ve lived through way worse. But it does put a crimp in the plans of Oliver, although I was never really concerned that help wouldn’t show up in the nick of time. As Naomi struggles to figure out if she’s going insane, there is talk of ghosts and intruders, but nothing can beat the sheer creepiness of Charlie’s behavior. The suspense mainly comes from wondering if the movie will “go there.” After it was over, everyone walked out with “What the heck was that?” looks on their faces. Myself included.